Hair salons across the country are training their workers to recognize signs of domestic abuse through CUT IT OUT, a program of the Professional Beauty Association.

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TUESDAY, Oct. 29, 2013 —When Michaela McCredie began cosmetology school a little over a year ago, she was in an abusive marriage, only she didn't realize it. As part of her curriculum, she took a training course on recognizing the signs of domestic violence and the message really hit home.

"If I didn't start school and take that class, I would be dead by now," McCredie said. "I had been in a marriage for seven years and had been verbally abused for five of them. Then it got so bad, it was no longer just verbal, but physical abuse, too. I didn't know there was a place to go for help."

Originally a statewide program in Alabama created by The Women's Fund of Greater Birmingham and the Alabama Coalition Against Domestic Violence, CUT IT OUTtrained more than 500 Alabama salon professionals in 2002. A year later, the Grants Allocation Chair and Founder and Director of Southern Living at HOME Dianne Mooney joined forces with the National Cosmetology Association (NCA) and Clairol Professional and formed a partnership to take CUT IT OUT national in March 2003. After NCA merged with PBA in 2010, CUT IT OUT became a program of PBA

Salons are an ideal place for this type of training because women often establish a close relationship with their hair stylists, said Rachel Molepske, Manager of Leadership Operations and Charitable Programs at PBA.

"Because salon professionals are skilled and experienced listeners who are personally interested in their clients, many women suffering from abuse feel comfortable confiding in them — even if the abused women would never tell anyone else," she said.

Molepske also notes that since a salon is usually an all-female environment, it may be one of the few places that a battered woman is allowed to go without her abuser.

The training does not, however, teach the stylists to become counselors or get personally involved in the situations. Rather, they are directed to provide resources to clients including local domestic violence organizations and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The program also provides this information on safety cards (the size of business cards) that can be easily hidden from an abusive partner.

After going through the training, McCredie sought help from her instructor Marcia Bird, a hairdresser by trade and Program Manager of Cosmetology at Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburgh, N.J., who requires her cosmetology students to take the CUT IT OUT training. They established a close relationship that helped McCredie reach out to the National Domestic Violence hotline and a local domestic violence agency. She finalized her divorce in July and lives on her own with two children, age 6 and 7. She now works as a hair dresser at LaMeche salon in Skillman, N.J., where she urges other women she thinks may be victims to seek help.

"I've given out a lot of the safety cards," she said. "A couple of women have come back to me and said they called the hotline."

Though CUT IT OUT does not keep records of how many salon workers they have trained, the program keeps growing, Molepske said. In the last year, training materials and posters were sent more than 10,000 salons across the country, up by nearly 1,000 from the year before. And although it is impossible to know how many women the program has helped, it is through anecdotal stories like McCredie's that those involved measure its success.

"Often, we think it doesn't happen here," Bird said, "but abuse can happen to anyone at any time of any race, gender, or economic background. And when people find that help and are able to move forward, it’s empowering."

"I think TV, social media, and new campaigns help," she said. "But in all reality, women get a good chunk of information from other women. When you get the conversation going, it can spread and be helpful to exponentially more women."

McCredie echoed this sentiment.

"The program changed my life," she said. "If I didn't take it, I wouldn't be free."

If you are someone you know is experiencing abuse, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit www.thehotline.org.

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